Portuguese peacekeepers battled for five hours to protect civilians and restore order after militants killed two police officers in the Central African Republic town of Bambari ahead of a scheduled visit by the country’s president on Thursday, January 10, like reported by thedefensepost.com.

The attack came a day after President Faustin-Archange Touadera announced that the government would meet armed groups in African Union-brokered peace talks in Khartoum.

Members of the Union for Peace in the Central African Republic (UPC) ex-Seleka militia and their allies carried out “various attacks” in the town early Thursday, a government statementsaid.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said it was treating 30 people for bullet wounds. MSF later said 26 people were still being treated but one person had died in hospital.

Corbeau News reported that around 10 people were killed, but it was not possible to confirm this toll.

The government later said on Twitter that 20 UPC members were killed and 15 others wounded.

According to an internal U.N. report seen by AFP, a combatant called “General Bello,” in charge of UPC fighters in Bambari, had been wounded.

Portuguese paratroopers in five-hour firefight

Minusca, the U.N. peacekeeping force in the country, sent peacekeepers to the site of the clashes, spokesperson Vladimir Monteiro told AFP. Its troops there had come under fire a day earlier, he added.

On Wednesday, the General Staff of the Portuguese Armed Forces said that paratroopers had deployed to Bambari, using its General Dynamics Pandur II wheeled armored vehicles for the first time in Africa.

On Thursday, the Portuguese “blue helmets spent five hours in direct combat” with UPC militants “with the objective of protecting civilians and restoring peace, interposing itself between the opposition group and the defenseless civilian population,” the General Staff said.

The UPC had used heavy weapons during the attack, putting civilians in the crossfire during confrontations with the Central African Armed Forces (FACa), it said, adding that all the paratroopers were safe.

Portugal has contributed peacekeepers to Minusca since the beginning of 2017. A total of 180 personnel, mainly paratroopers, are deployed, with a special company operating from the capital Bangui as a Rapid Reaction Force.

Portugal contributes a further 50 personnel to the European Union Training Mission in CAR (EUTM-RCA), and Portugal’s Major General Hermínio Maio has since January 2018 served as Mission Force Commander in theatre. He leads a total of 187 personnel from Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Italy, Georgia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain and Sweden. On January 8, personnel from Brazil joined the mission.

The E.U. mission has trained more than 3,000 personnel to serve in FACa, and last July, the bloc extended EUTM-RCA until 2020, pledging €25 million ($29 million) to help reform the country’s defense sector. The scope of the mission was also modified to give strategic advice to the president’s cabinet, interior ministry and police, as well as the military.

Bambari: A city without arms or armed groups?

Bambari, in the center of CAR, straddles several areas under the influence of various armed groups and enjoyed a relative calm after the intervention of Minusca in early 2017 to oust the UPC. The U.N. subsequently made Bambari a showcase for its Central African Republic intervention, arguing that the town was ‘without arms or armed groups,’ but over the past six months there have been a number of other significant violent incidents in the town.

According to some reports, fighters from the UPC, an ex-Seleka militia group led by Ali Darras, were responsible for the violence in Bambari, but a UPC spokesperson denied that its fighters had entered the town.

On October 31, a Portuguese paratrooper suffered minor injuries after being hit during clashes with an armed group in Bambari, the General Staff said. Two days later, Portuguese troops fought for seven hours for control of the town against militants who used heavy weapons and launched rocket propelled grenades from fortified positions. The military later published dramatic video of its troops in combat.

Supported by the U.N. and CAR’s main partners, the A.U. has been striving to kick-start negotiations between the militias and the government since July 2017, but some diplomats and observers have criticized the process for inefficiency.

The majority-Christian country descended into violence following the 2013 ousting of President Francois Bozize in 2013 by the Seleka, a coalition of mainly Muslim rebel groups.

Seleka was officially disbanded within months, but many fighters refused to disarm, becoming known as ex-Seleka. Many others joined the mainly Christian anti-balaka militia to fight the Seleka, leading to a spiral of violence between groups along religious and ethnic lines.

By the end of 2014, CAR was de facto partitioned – anti-balaka in the southwest and ex-Seleka in the northeast.

Touadera’s weak government controls around a fifth of the country and relies heavily on the U.N. peacekeeping mission, Minusca, for support. The rest is controlled by at least 14 different militia groups who often fight each other for revenue from extortion, roadblocks or mineral resources.

Violence by both sides led to thousands of deaths. Nearly 700,000 people are displaced and 570,000 have fled the country, according to the U.N.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that 2.9 million people – more than 63 percent of the population – will need humanitarian assistance in 2019.

Seven peace agreements have been signed since the crisis erupted in 2012, but none has endured.